Thursday, March 09, 2006

It seemed like a good idea at the time

I think Gavin (quoting Ian) may have started something. He's relating ministry stories that end "it seemed like a good idea at the time." Hmm....

In 2002 (or was it 2001?), I did a Daycamp -- for the Girl Scouts. It was using the "God and Country" materials. It was great. 60 plus girls, almost as many adults. We did 6 to 7 hours of camp a day and at the end of the week we were going to give the girls their awards at the end of a worship service.

Well, one of the leaders suggested that the girls do their shadowpuppet show at the worship service. I (as grand poo-bah of the worship service) thought "OK, that'll work." What I didn't realize was that the girls were hams. At the first rehearsal, we let them go across the stage while wiggling the shadow puppet on the screen. It took just a few minutes -- the reading was Genesis 1 and the shadow puppets were all about the 6 days of creation.

And the girls loved it. They liked to play with the puppets. Rehearsal went great, but the day of the performance, they realized that Mommy and Daddy were watching. The first half dozen went as expected. Then they started stopping and playing with the puppets walking v-e-r-y slowly. What took just a couple of minutes the previous day started taking longer and longer and l-o-n-g-e-r and l-o-o-n-n-g-g-e-e-r. It took almost 15 minutes to push them off the stage. By that time no one was paying attention -- people were talking to each other, getting up to go to the bathroom, congregating in the back and yacking.

I caught it from the staff the next day about the sheer length of the service -- who was to know that these girls were such hams? I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time....

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